Condition of the Soil

The condition of the soil determines the quality of growth.  From a gardening perspective, the condition of the soil matters to grow healthy plants.  From a leadership perspective, the soil represents our hearts and minds. 

Condition of the Soil

I used to spend the early Springs of my youth helping my grandfather prepare the soil for his garden.  Paw Paw, as we affectionately referred to him, taught me everything I know about gardening. 

When I was a young child, we would prepare the soil with a walk behind tiller and a soil screening device that he constructed.  The device would break up large chucks of hardened soil and filter out the rocks. 

In my teenage years, he purchased The Land.  It was a larger tract of land that required a tractor to plow the soil.  I served as the screening device for rocks!  I would follow him on the tractor and remove large rocks by hand that he had kicked up.  I eagerly anticipated the point in the process where the rocks stopped popping up!   

Preparing the soil was always the first step in the growing process.  It conditioned the soil to receive the plant.

If our hearts and minds are the soil of leadership, what can we learn from the soil preparation process of gardening?  Here are two soil conditions that we must deal with to create an environment for personal leadership growth:     

Hardened Soil

Even the best soil can become hardened over time.  Just the presence of foot traffic alone can tamp it down.  With every step, the soil becomes more and more compacted.  Heavily traveled areas of the garden are the hardest.  Hardened soil does not allow the necessary oxygen, nutrients, and water to get to the roots of the plant.  These nutrients are the basis of all plant growth.      

You cannot grow plants on hardened soil.  It just doesn’t work.  The plants will never bear fruit. 

The same is true for leadership, our hearts and minds can be hardened over time.   Who we are today is a culmination of our experiences.  Our experiences can develop wisdom, or they can tamp our ability to grow. 

President John F. Kennedy once said, “Leadership and learning are indispensable of each other.”  We cannot allow our experiences to harden us to the point that learning cannot penetrate our hearts and minds.  Leaders are learners…period. 

When we reach the point that we feel like we have arrived in leadership, it’s time to till the soil…the soil conditions for growth no longer exist. 

Weeds

Before we started the process of preparing the soil each year, the ground was always covered in weeds.  The plowing process would turn those weeds over, uproot them, and they would die. 

Weeds choke out good things.  They grow faster and more aggressive than plants that bear fruit.  To grow things, the weeds must go first.

In leadership, weeds are all the things that keep us from harvesting our full potential.  Of those things, busyness is the weed that impedes our growth.  It suffocates us and inhibits our ability to be better.    

In a world that moves faster and faster, there is always more to be done.  The problem is, when we are busy, we aren’t necessarily growing.  I’ve read about leaders who carve out “library” time.  Intentional time each week to create space to think, reflect, and grow.

All of us intend to create this space, but intention doesn’t always determine direction.  It requires discipline and regular commitment.  Two things that busyness can choke out. 

If the condition of the soil is consumed by weeds, we just won’t grow. 

Conclusion

During the process of turning over the land, we would also add things to the soil.  It could be leaves, topsoil, and/or fertilizer.  These additives provided critical nutrients to the soil before the plants went in the ground.  It enhanced the conditions of the soil for growth. 

If we can humble ourselves enough to soften our hearts and minds.  If we can get rid of the weeds that choke out our learning.  Then what?  What does growing really look like?    

Growing looks like creating margin to Be the Person People Want to Follow.  It looks like walking hallways to get the pulse of the organization, writing notes of gratitude affirming the good in the organization, reading books, and listening to podcasts.

Never engaged your team in a leadership development activity?  Pick a ten-minute YouTube video and play it at the beginning of a team meeting.  Have a brief discussion around it.  Pick a leadership book, cover one chapter a week with a group of key leaders. 

There is unlimited content out there to help us grow as leaders.  The question is, does the condition of our soil allow for that growth?  If not, start tilling.